Thanks, Gary. (01)That's good to know. (02)Henry (03)On Sun, 2003-07-13 at 20:52, Gary Richmond wrote:
> FYI Forwarded from the Co-learners list, the approach is summarized in this short article's conclusion:
>
> >'Government Information Awareness' . . . is based on a simple proposition: if governments
> >now feel entitled to keep us under cyber-surveillance, why not use software
> >tools to keep them under surveillance too? The MIT folks are building a
> >system which will collate all publicly available information about all
> >public officials in the US.
> >
> >We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically
> >collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour,
> >Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends,
> >attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we
> >could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy.
> >
> >Our rulers might then begin to realise that accountability is a two-way
> >street.
>
>
>
> Don't get mad, get political
>
> John Naughton
> Sunday July 13, 2003
> The Observer
>
> Here's the unpalatable truth: software has become political. It's
> unpalatable because most engineers detest politics as the epitome of the
> hypocrisy and muddle they sought to escape by choosing a trade that values
> consistency and logic. But it was inevitable that the two worlds would
> intersect as soon as the web became a mass medium. Control of information
> has always been a tool of regimes, and anything that threatens to loosen
> that grip will be resisted.
> Note that this isn't just about content. Some of the content published on
> the web - whether in the form of subversive information, political discourse
> or entertainment - does attract condemnation, prosecution, suppression or
> worse. Content certainly has a political dimension.
>
> But content isn't software, so why is that political? Answer: because
> software determines the architecture of cyberspace, and thus determines what
> you can do with and in the space. For example, the software facilitates
> anonymity and free innovation. The first gives us unparalleled freedom of
> expression - and spam; the second enables disruptive innovations such as
> instant messaging, streaming media, file-swapping and internet telephony -
> all of which threaten the established order.
>
> The establishment responds by running to the courts, which is why there are
> three Bills about spam doing the rounds of the US Congress - and why there
> exists a statute that grossly restricts freedoms to write certain kinds of
> software. This is politics with both small and large Ps.
>
> Because geeks don't like politics, they tend to avoid it. Big mistake. The
> lesson of recent history is that if you don't want the established order to
> nobble legislators and enact daft, repressive or biased laws, then you have
> to mix it with the politicos. The software community needs to start thinking
> like the environmental movement, and develop some of the same political
> adroitness.
>
> It also needs to start using its technical skills. Two heartening examples
> have just come to light. The first is Ed Felten's response to the US Supreme
> Court ruling that publicly-funded libraries must use filtering software to
> control users' access to the net. The problem is that commercial filtering
> software is opaque and unaccountable - the implicit values which determine
> what's blocked are secret and the companies are very aggressive about not
> disclosing them. Why not then, says Ed, write some open-source software that
> librarians can use? That way, they can comply with the law, but in a way
> that enables them to make professional judgements about the filtering to be
> applied.
>
> The other initiative comes from the MIT Media Lab. It's called 'Government
> Information Awareness' and is based on a simple proposition: if governments
> now feel entitled to keep us under cyber-surveillance, why not use software
> tools to keep them under surveillance too? The MIT folks are building a
> system which will collate all publicly available information about all
> public officials in the US.
>
> We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically
> collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour,
> Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends,
> attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we
> could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy.
>
> Our rulers might then begin to realise that accountability is a two-way
> street.
>
> john.naughton@observer.co.uk
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,997037,00.html
>
>
>
>
--
Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@sympatico.ca> (04)